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The Ultimate Guide to Augmented Reality
By [email protected] (Alicia Collins)
Picture this: It’s rainy Saturday afternoon and you’re spending your day indoors at a local art museum. You meander from room to room staring at all the art, but not really absorbing any information. The information next to the art is too small, too crowded, or frankly, too boring. You quickly lose interest and make your way to the cafe.
If you’re anything like me, the situation I just described sounds pretty familiar. Let’s face it, it’s hard to stay engaged at a museum when the information provided isn’t that engaging or easily accessible. But what if there was a different way to consume information about artwork? Imagine if you could receive interesting information about a painting simply by pointing your phone at it — creating a frictionless and delightful experience.
Source: Cuseum
Sound far-fetched? It’s not. In fact, the technology is already in use. And not only is it used in museums, it’s part of your favorite social media apps too. What helps you become a dog and get cultural information at the touch of a button? Augmented reality (AR) of course!
But while this technology is familiar in some settings, it’s definitely not simple. Behind every fun filter is augmented reality, or AR, hard at work — altering and enhancing our reality in real-time. And AR can do much more than transform your face or recognize your favorite paintings. It allows people to interact with digital objects in their home, in stores, and in public spaces.
We understand that augmented reality (AR) can be confusing. That’s why we created this AR guide. Here we’ll walk through what AR is, how it differs from virtual reality, its applications, and how growing businesses should use it.
History of Augmented Reality (AR)
You’re probably thinking, I guess I’ve used AR, but can we do a deeper dive? As we stated above, augmented reality (AR) is an enhanced or altered form of reality where superimposed content gets added to users’ real-world views.
Those Snapchat filters? Yeah, that’s augmented reality. Pokemon Go? Totally augmented reality. Oculus Rift? Well, no. That’s actually virtual reality, and we’ll get to that later. Augmented reality (AR) assists fighter pilots flying at nearly twice the speed of sound and helps surgeons to perform complicated procedures, but it wasn’t always this advanced or accessible.
AR technology was born at Harvard University in 1968. Ivan Sutherland, an electrical engineering professor, created a head-mounted display system, nicknamed “The Sword of Damocles.” Sounds intimidating, right? It was. The massive headset weighed so much that it was anchored to the ceiling to operate. Users also had to be strapped into the system for it to work, making the experience pretty uncomfortable.
Over the next several decades, advancements in AR led to helpful aviation, military, and industrial simulation tools, but the technology didn’t gain a national audience until the late 1990s. One of the first widely visible uses of …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
